a. Field of the Invention
In general, the present invention relates to a system for removing manure from a deposit area. More specifically, the present invention relates to a scraper assembly for removing manure from one or more collection boards located below a cage arrangement, usually found within a commercial egg laying house.
b. Description of Related Prior Art
Manure collection and control presents a number of problems in the commercial egg production industry. In an egg laying operation, for example, the collection and control of manure generated from multi-tiered cage arrangements, which can extend for several hundred feed, is critical to a successful operation.
One manner of collecting manure in a poultry operation is to direct the manure deposits falling from the individual cages within the multi-tiered cage configuration into a accumulation pit located beneath a main floor in the laying house. In order to better control the entry of the manure into the sub-floor accumulation pit, however, it has proved to be advantageous to first collect the cage manure deposits onto collection boards located below the cage arrangement, but above the accumulation pit.
Once the manure has been collected onto the collection boards, it can then be scraped from the boards into a relatively narrow slot formed between the boards which leads to the sub-level accumulation pit.
Automated scraper assembles to transfer the manure from the collection boards to the sub-level pit have, in the past, included a blade spanning the entire width of the board mounted on a frame which, when driven along the board, functions to scrape and direct manure toward the floor slot. If this arrangement is used to clear a collection board having any more than a relatively small amount of manure present on the collection board, however, the scraping action of the blade across the entire width of the board tends to collect too much manure to divert into the floor slot, and thus creates clogging problems. In part, this problem is due to the uneven distribution of manure deposited on the collection boards which results in areas of concentrated deposits.
Also, in current poultry operations, the demand has been for taller cages, from 2 and 3 tier high systems in the past to 4 and 5 tier high systems now in operation. This has increased the concentration of manure under said cages. In the future, cages will likely be even taller.